KDDI shows off some impressive new Android devices for Japan

Sharp coming up with the goods in the form of a new tablet and smartphone, not that we'll see them in the west

KDDI over in Japan has been rolling out a bunch of new devices today. Among them are some we're already familiar with such as the LG G Flex and the new WiFi only Sony Xperia Z Ultra. And then there are those we'll never get to see in western markets, such as this tablet, and a new smartphone from Sharp. Both of which are packing some pretty impressive hardware specs.

The Aquos Pad pictured here is a 7-inch tablet, running the now somewhat outdated Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. But the interesting part is taking place around back. For this tablet contains a smartphone-class camera; a 13MP rear shooter. We don't know if it's actually any good, but if you're one who enjoys taking photos using a tablet, it has to be up there with the best of them. And, with a 1920x1200 display round the front, those full resolution photographs should be pretty great to look at.

Then comes this, the Aquos Phone Series Mini. Besides the pretty fantastic range of colors – can't go far wrong with a nice lime green – the story of this phone is in its display. Because Sharp has packed an astonishing 1080p display into this phone, at just 4.5-inches with 487ppi. The HTC One packs 1080p resolution into 4.7-inches, so consider shrinking things down a little further. A real visual treat.

The rest of the hardware is about as high-end as we could expect right now; a Snapdragon 800, 2GB of RAM and a 13.1MP rear camera. It too runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

So, we might not be laying our hands on either of these any time soon, but it's still pretty cool to take a look at what's happening on the other side of the world. Japanese Android fans get some great looking devices to play with, and who knows, maybe sometime down the line devices we can buy might include similar hardware features.

If you think Verizon is bad, you don't know AU (aka "AU by KDDI")... Japanese carriers know even less about updates, it's not in their DNA. Japanese people like anything with the label "new"... Plus all the customizations from Sharp on there, plus the shared data plans that are available only with this tablet, etc.... Plus this carrier is the only CDMA carrier, just like Verizon, so they got pretty good lock-in.

Japanese designs have always been cutting edge. What The fact about Japanese devices is that the makers modify the launcher so much that its nearly indistinguishable. But they are still not the complete solution like the xiaomi devices, they all run Google services.
Perhaps that explains the reason for the older version

I think Sharp should try and dip their toes in the water and see how they perform internationally. This is the only other Japanese manufacturer that I'd want in the international market (maybe Fujitsu as well).

Even the LG phones for the US market (LG G2 + LG Flex) are coming out with Android 4.2.2...why not upgrade them to 4.3 or better yet 4.4 since LG's making the Nexus 5 phone and all the hardware specs are the same for their newest lines of phones.

Portions of this page are modifications based on work created and shared by the Android Open Source Project
and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution License. AndroidCentral is an independent site
that is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.